“Here is my hand,” he felt her press her hand upon his chest, directly above his heart, where the crest of Estone was about to be tattooed into his flesh. There was a sudden searing pain that was intense freezing and fire both, and neither, or more, where her palm and fingers spread across his chest. He felt the pain, exquisite and excruciating, penetrate his skin, and sink into his chest. His heart could no longer beat, and then the pain delved further through his flesh and muscle and bone, all the way to his shoulder blade beneath, where it felt like his skin was burning from the divine encounter on his chest. He knew that he was dying; his heart was not beating, his blood was not moving, and unconsciousness was only seconds away. “Done,” she whispered. He felt the pressure of her hand released from his chest, and then the pain was gone, as his heart began to beat again, a wild, fluttering staccato pulse of restored life.
“This is my mark upon you. With this mark you are truly bound to be the champion of the people of Estone. In times of trouble, when only you can save them, you will feel the crest grip your heart to compel you to go forth and do battle for the people of the land,” the goddess spoke words that were burned into his brain.
“You four,” she spoke to the men in the back, “will go forth into the court and the palace and the city and spread the word of what you have seen and heard here. You will tell Estone that Kestrel is the champion of the people. And the Doge will confirm that he has dreamed this.
“Kestrel, you will go on journeys, and travel widely, but when you feel the crest burn you, you will know that you must battle for these people, whether here in this land, or elsewhere, when some distant threat to Estone, or all of humanity, has arisen. Do you accept your responsibility to fulfill this?” she asked.
“I do swear to serve as the champion of the people,” Kestrel solemnly answered, thinking of Merilla, and protecting her from whatever threat might hover over Estone.
“Then our covenant is sealed. I will help you when needed, and you will answer the call when it comes,” the goddess’s voice grew graver. Then it sounded one last phrase inside his head, so that only he heard: “You will be the champion for me and for the old order of gods, standing up for us as well if ever we reach dire need for your help.”
And then there was a clap of thunder within the chapel, and the goddess disappeared in a rising column of sparks that circled about the ceiling and then floated up into and through the rafters.
As the sparks of divinity disappeared, Kestrel’s vision returned. He looked about, and saw the faintly glowing traces of the goddess’s exit floating above, and he saw the still glowing footprints that traveled up the aisle of the chapel. He turned and saw the four witnesses, still stretched out on the floor behind him.
“Get up, all of you. Get up, she’s gone,” Kestrel told them, as he sat up. He tried to look down at his chest to see what she had done. The image was upside down, and seen from a sharp angle, so he could discern no details, but he could tell that the image on his left side was shiny like fish scales, while the image on his right looked dull by comparison. The bright, shiny image had colors that seemed as vivid as a window of stained glass. He looked over at a window and saw that the sun was shining brightly outside, the storm having passed.
There was a banging at the door, and then a small group of palace guards entered the building.
“It looked as though the chapel was on fire!” one of them cried as he stood on the threshold and looked within. “The storm came out of nowhere and formed right here. The lightning struck and the windows glowed from within as though there was a white hot fire!”
“There was,” the tattoo artist spoke, rising and approaching Kestrel. “There was a holy fire in here. We were visited by the goddess Kai herself! See,” he pointed at the floor in front of them. “There are her footsteps!”
He reached Kestrel and examined the mark on his chest. “This is a miracle!” he exclaimed. “She has chosen you! She has marked you as the true champion; it’s not just a title.
“This is extraordinary,” he murmured as he bent and looked at the details of the new crest. “It’s so detailed and lifelike. These colors are exquisite!”
Kestrel sat in a daze, unable to immediately recover from the force of the encounter he had been subjected to. The goddess had done nothing of malevolent intent to him, but the exposure to her unconstrained presence had been more than he could comprehend. He heard the voices around him, but their meaning flew over his head.
“Look at his back!” one of the tattooist’s assistants said, pointing at him.
The artist peered around to his back as the soldiers arrived and circled around. “It’s her handprint!” he exclaimed. He gently prodded the raw, burned flesh with a finger, and the pain of the touch got Kestrel’s attention, snapping him out of his trance at last.
“Ow!” he said as he flinched, while he swatted at the poking hand.
The assistants were talking to the guards, each of them telling the story of what had happened, as Kestrel sat and swung his legs over the side of the cot, then stood up. His legs felt weak, and he felt dizzy, both lingering further side effects of the visitation from the goddess. He looked around and saw his shirt, which he grabbed up, and pulled on. It rubbed and chaffed the handprint on his back before he even had it pulled down over his stomach, and he quickly yanked it back off.
He looked around at the small clusters of guards and tattoo attendees, talking volubly to each other, and he tried to comprehend everything they were saying to each other, but his mind still primarily dwelt on his experience, the voice and the sight and the touch of the goddess who had materialized solely to give him an assignment to protect the humans of Estone. It was incomprehensible, unthinkable.
Without comprehending anything, he walked down the aisle of the chapel and out into the small garden that insulated it from the surrounding palace. He held his shirt in his hand as he looked up at the cloudless sky, the sun beginning to set on the western horizon. He didn’t know what to do, or where to go. He walked away, unnoticed by the others within the chapel as they continued to retell their tales and thoughts.
Many noticed the man without a shirt who walked through the palace, but no one stopped him as he wandered to the gate and left the palace grounds, his mind beginning to churn more and more as he tried to pull himself back into the real world, and to consider the implications of the divine direction he had received.
Did he need to permanently reside in Estone? Should he consider himself only as a human henceforth, and forget the elven heritage that he lived all his life? Was he meant to stay in this city, and should he woo Merilla to be his wife after all (assuming the gods would allow), when her widowhood was over? How could he turn his back on the elves, who needed him to gather information for them, to protect their race? Could he return to the elves who had tricked him and used him? Would he ever experience such a visit with the human goddess again, and did he even want to? It was so vastly different from the visit Kere had made, when she had directed him to the healing spring; that had been a warm and intimate encounter, a friendlier experience altogether.
The sun was set and the sky was dark, he realized. He must have walked about the city for hours in his contemplative daze. He was in front of the inn where he and Merilla and her boys were staying. He no longer held his shirt; he must have dropped it at some point in his existential musings. With a sigh, he opened the door and walked straight across the foyer then up the stairs, unconcerned about his state of partial nakedness.
When he opened the bedroom door the room was dark. Merilla was already in bed, asleep. He sat on the mattress and pulled off his boots, then his trousers, and slumped forward, sleeping on his stomach to protect the painful deep burn on his back.
“Kestrel?” Merilla sleepily called.
“I’m back,” he said comfortingly. “Are the boys asleep?”
“They are,” she assured him. He heard her yawn. “How did the auction go?”
“I’m not sure,”
he said recollecting for the first time that the auction of the yeti goods had occurred while he was at the palace.
“That’s good; we’ll talk in the morning,” she murmured as she fell asleep again, and after a long time of lying in the bed and thinking, Kestrel fell asleep as well.
Chapter 22 — The Auction Results
Kestrel awoke with a gasp. He felt something cold being spread across his back. Upon opening his eyes he found that the morning was well underway, the sun had risen far above the horizon, and Merilla sat beside him, carefully slathering a pot of ointment on the handprint that was burned into his shoulder blade.
“Were you at the palace yesterday afternoon?” she asked as he raised his head.
“Yes,” he grunted. After the shock of the chill from the ointment, he felt relief, as the substance numbed the painful evidence of his encounter with the divine.
“There are strange stories in the city today,” Merilla told him. He heard her clamp the lid back down on the ointment jar, and he sensed the strain in her voice.
With a grunt Kestrel raised himself up on his elbows and twisted himself to look at his caregiver. She gasped as his chest came into view, and stared silently for long seconds, then tentatively reached out her hand and touched the vivid, shiny crest emblazoned on his left side.
“They say a goddess came to the chapel in the palace and worked her powers on the champion of the people,” Merilla said. She raised her eyes to look at his face. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never experienced anything like it before,” he replied, turning further to sit up straight and face her directly. Her eyes were glued to his chest, flickering back and forth from one side to the other.
“I’ve met one of the Elven goddesses, and I didn’t even know she was a goddess at first; she tricked me. But Kai was overwhelming; I went blind from looking at her face, my mind is still scrambled from her words, and you see what her touch did to me,” he tried to organize his thoughts, for he knew he had to talk to her.
“Thank you for treating my back,” he added. “It hurts, but your ointment made it much better.”
“That’s my mother’s own special brewed painkiller,” she said.
There was silence between them.
“I am going to go to Castona’s this morning, and find out how the auction did. I’ll collect your funds and deliver them to you,” he told her. “Then, I need to go someplace and think.
“The goddess has laid a charge on me, and it frightens me. I don’t know what to do,” Kestrel said.
“Kestrel, you must do whatever the goddess told you to do,” Merilla said softly. “You don’t have a choice.”
“I, I know,” he stuttered. “I just don’t understand where I must go, or how many masters can give me orders. I don’t know who I am any more Merilla,” his voice almost broke.
She sat silently and waited for him to say more.
“I’m going to go back to the forest to think. I don’t know what makes me so special; I don’t know how to be a champion. I know the goddess says I am one, so I must be, but I am scared and confused, not proud, not confident, not comfortable,” he said.
“Are you going to leave today?” Merilla asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Do you,” she hesitated, “Do you need a companion to go with you?” Her eyes stared at his.
He knew what he wanted to say, but he sensed that the goddess did not foresee the same thing. Dewberry’s untimely appearance had made that clear. “I want a companion, but I do not think I should have one right now,” he told her.
“I understand,” she said bravely. “In that case Kestrel, I am going to start packing the boys and myself up, so that we can move into my parent’s home, while we wait to buy the home with the leather shop. My mother does not think it is proper for us to be sharing this hotel room, and there’s no need to spend further money at the inn.
“Could you come there to meet us when you return from the merchant’s shop?” she asked, with eyes that were bright with unshed tears.
“I will bring everything directly to you,” he assured her. He rose from the bed and began to gather his own belongings. “Merilla?” he asked, as they each silently went about their packing, “Would you help me put this shirt on over the ointment on my back?”
She walked over and placed a patch of gauze on his back, then stood in front of him, carefully tugging the cloth down over his raised arms, their eyes constantly staring at each other’s as she fixed the shirt in place. They each seemed on the verge of saying something as they stood, then there was a racket in the other room, and the boys came bursting into their room, breaking the moment.
Kestrel picked up his knapsack of supplies, and carefully slung it over his right shoulder, along with his bow and quiver of arrows. “I’ll see you in a little while,” he told Merilla, and was quickly out the door without a backwards glance at the rooms that had been a family home so happily but briefly. And just like that, Kestrel felt they had parted ways.
On the streets his still bandaged head drew attention, but he suspected his fancy court hat would also garner looks were he to use it to hide the bandages, so he stopped and bought a plain, ordinary slouch hat, one that covered the material around his skull, and thereby allowed him to walk inconspicuously to Castona’s shop.
When he entered the shop, he immediately heard Castona call, “Kestrel!” loudly, and he saw the merchant waving at the end of the counter.
“I have worked long and hard to help the elves, you know,” Castona told Kestrel when he reached the merchants spot, speaking in the Elvish tongue.
“And I work to help my own people too,” he continued to speak Elvish. “I’ve never felt that I was betraying one to help the other.
“But I’ve never been appointed by a goddess to be the champion of one. Do you know what you will do someday if the goddess tells you the Elves are a threat to the humans of Estone?” he asked.
“I do not know,” Kestrel replied in the same language, the others in the store looking at them blankly. “I am going to take time to think and to try to understand what has happened to me.
“If you think you have an answer, Castona, I am willing to listen. Do you have an answer — can you tell me who I am?” he asked.
“You are someone who is destined for two things — greatness and trouble,” Castona said. “And I am glad that I will not have to suffer either situation!”
“Now,” he switched to the human language, “would you like to come back to the office to talk about business?” The merchant led the way to one of the rooms in the back.
“May I see it?” he asked. “May I see what a goddess does to mark her favors on her champion?”
Kestrel was happy to unload the many items he had slung over his right shoulder, though less willing to display the left-side results of his time in the chapel. As he removed the straps across his shoulder he realized that he had two full skins of healing water from the spring in the Eastern Forest, and he no longer cared if his ears grew out; he was leaving the city that afternoon, and had no reason to worry about his appearance henceforth.
He raised the front of his shirt, showing the tattoo and the divine sign to Castona. “Extraordinary,” the trader breathed. “I’ll go get your funds,” he said as he stood after crouching and studying the artwork for several seconds. With that he was out of the room, and Kestrel began to dribble a light stream of water from the skin onto the front of his body, unconcerned about soaking the material of his shirt, some water on the tattoo on his chest, some on the handprint on his back, and a little that he drank for good measure.
He sat down when finished, as he heard the approach of someone down the hallway. Castona came back, accompanied by a bearer, and each of them placed a heavy bag on the table. “Your share is fifty golds! The auction was an incredible success! I appreciate the opportunity you gave me to share in this. Geile is here to help you carry your money to whatever safe spot you have in mind,” he g
leefully told Kestrel, his previous seriousness erased by the reminder of the huge profit he had received from the auction.
“There’s also the matter of your income from the palace. They want to know when you’ll come by to pick it up?” he added.
“Would you just ask them to open an account for me at the bank, and deposit there? I won’t need the money any time soon,” Kestrel had forgotten about the stipend he was entitled to as a Captain of the Fleet.
“Which bank?” Castona asked.
“Is there a bank that I will be able to access in other lands, such as Graylee or Hydrotaz, or elsewhere?” Kestrel asked.
“You will want to use the Bank of the Inland Seas,” Castona said promptly. “I’ll make arrangements. Just come by here first before you try to go to the bank and I’ll have the paperwork you need for opening the account.”
“Are you ready Geile?” Kestrel asked. The bearer nodded silent agreement, and Kestrel replaced all his traveling goods back across his shoulder, then grunted as he lifted one of the bags of gold.
“You have been a great help, Castona,” Kestrel said. He liked the merchant, and trusted him, for the most part. “I’ll tell Arlen that you were a big help.”
Together Kestrel and his temporary associate left the shop, and Kestrel led Geile immediately to the Estone Shippers Bank, where he deposited all but five golds in Merilla’s account, then dismissed Geile, and gave him a silver as a token of thanks. With the five remaining golds in a pouch on his belt, Kestrel took his time walking through the human city towards Merilla’s home. These humans were his people now, in a sense, strange as that sounded. Yet it seemed plausible, too. He’d lived a few days in the city and grown mostly accustomed to it, after spending the long journey through the wilderness with Merilla and her boys, acting as a human.
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